Every Breath You Take …

Update 14 May 2020

COVID has taken our eyes off of our progress towards Brexit. Here’s a roundup of stories from home and abroad, across the last week in our breath-taking march towards Brexit against the COVID odds … Our PM continues to vacillate, reverberate and incubate, but all is not well in US trade talks and it seems that cabinet members are fighting like cats in a sack. Read on …

Would I lie to EU?

Michael Gove just announced that the golden rule of no tariffs under Brexit would be dumped. That means 35% on the cost of some imported items. Just check your grocery bill and wait for the next time you buy a car …

Whilst we were counting dead bodies and wondering whether you are alert, you may not have noticed that Boris Johnson just broke another golden rule of the withdrawal agreement. There will be checks on the Irish border. Back to the 1970’s for queues. It also throws the Good Friday agreement under a bus, endangering the fragile peace on the island of Ireland, but wait, we get a 50 pence coin, a passport and the ability to call Cheddar “Cheddar”, so that must be alight?

Write to your MP Ask them what has prompted these U turns. Ask if there is now a need for a renegotiation of the withdrawal agreement as the Brexit on offer is not “the one sold in the brochure”.

Out of the EU frying pan into Trump’s fire

Our USA Today scouts report that President Trump has asked that we keep the details of the “NHS sale”, correction “US Trade deal’ be kept a secret for 5 years. What possible reason could he have for this? How are businesses to be able to take advantage of any possible opportunities if they don’t know what they are? Fortunately, Liz Truss is at the helm to help us throw our farmers under a bus. Rishi Sunak was so confused by the whole matter that he voted against eating Chlorinated Chicken. He then declared that it was a mistake – after all, in the digital age, it’s just like pressing the red button on your TV controller when you meant to press the blue button. Meanwhile, Tom Tugendhat is pursuing his own attempts to out Trump Trump with his anti-China rhetoric. I plan a socially distanced Chinese meal with Tom at the appropriately named Imperial Dynasty restaurant in West Malling. Tweet Tom to invite him to a Chinese meal on your 5G phone.

Digging for Britain

Guy Watson, CEO of Riverford Farms reports on his unexpected team of farm workers this week. Due to his enlightened policies he has actually recruited some English farm workers and reports them to be keen and able, due to careful selection alongside his Bulgarian workers. He reflects that they are mostly there by circumstance due to lack of income due to Corona. He doubts they will come back next year when Brexit strikes.

Dover Soul

P&O have just announced 1000 redundancies. Corona has simply accelerated what Brexit was going to do to Dover and Britain in general by crashing out of the Single Market. But it’s what the people of Dover voted for, so we guess that they must be happy about it. Comment on the article at Kent Live.

Kier Construction

Shock horror. Sir Kier Starmer has been appearing in the Telegraph and the other right-wing press. He must be electable! That will never do. The word from our Sevenoaks media mole is that “Johnson’s gone soft”. The Mail said Johnson was on the rack after Starmer “ambushed” him. This is a sea change from anything the vile rag would have published about Jezza. Please show your support for Starmer by commenting on the article in The Mail. Here’s mine:

Write to Kier Starmer and ask him to put pressure on Boris Johnson not to add Brexit disaster to Corona crisis.

APP-arently broken

Our man from Pompey reports that the much awaited COVID APP is not fit for purpose:

It is ineffective – the Cummings NHS app works on Bluetooth. This means that you might be standing on a train platform when a train arrives with a passenger who has Corona. You don’t board the train but later on you get a notification that you may be COVID positive. This has the potential to create thousands of false positives and self-isolation cases.

Rebel Yell

22 Conservative MP’s rebelled against the Government yesterday, over the question of hormone fed beef and chlorine washed chicken from the US. Chancellor Sunak was amongst them. Later on Rishi claimed he did not know the difference between voting yes or no. No doubt this level of confusion also applied to our Brexit poll with 94% of people wanting Brexit dumped when Johnson is still holding it in the microwave on gas mark four. After Brexit, our bonfire on standards will include farmers it seems in our United Hamburger Nation.

“Every Breath You Take” – Holding Brexit to account for a Better Britain and a Better Europe